ASU Poly developing sustainable garden

by William Hermann - Feb. 10, 2010 09:15 AMThe Arizona Republic

Arizona State University Polytechnic students and faculty are tilling the soil, digging in mulch and planting green beans, squash, okra, lettuce and tomato seeds into a cluster of plots on the east Mesa campus.

All for sustainability . . . and some very good food.

"Our community garden at Polytechnic will be the first of several we plan to put in on all the campuses, and all for the same reasons," said Bonny Bentzin, Director of Sustainability Practices for ASU's Global Institute of Sustainability.

"ASU has a vision of sustainability and this garden is a part of that vision. The garden is about showing there are other ways to feed your family. It's also to create a sense of community and to transform an area that was underutilized to a prosperous, vital, engaging area."

She said Polytechnic's sustainability committee, established a year ago as part of a university-wide effort to improve sustainable practices, identified the creation of a community garden as one of its three primary goals.

Bentzin said the garden is one of, "about two hundred projects, large and small" that are contributing to ASU achieving "carbon neutrality."

"We want zero waste: solid and water waste," Bentzin said. "We are instituting programs to achieve this in the food we serve, how we clean our buildings, how we recycle, how we do everything."

She said one such program involves residence hall students who recycle batteries and cell phones. Another student effort involves creating a program to convert ASU diesel vehicles to use biodiesel and vegetable fat.

Bentzin was at the Polytechnic campus recently to join about 30 students, faculty and residents as they worked the soil in a small unused lot in the north end of the campus, creating eight garden plots, each about 20 by 30 feet.

While Bentzin watched, students with shovels and rakes went to work on the soil-fortunately softened by recent rains. Student Chris Perry, 21, saved everyone a lot of shovel work by guiding a gas operated power tiller up and down the plots.

"I'm an aviation student, but I'm also taking a biology class about plants in society," Perry said, taking a break from his tilling. "This is practical application of what we're learning and really interesting. Fun too."

Jehnifer Niklas, Program Coordinator for University Sustainability Practices, was helping supervise the ground level work.

"The goal is to execute an efficient community garden that makes sense for the poly campus and meets their needs," Niklas said stepping away from where Perry was firing-up the tiller. "We want to bring focus onto nutrition and lowering our carbon footprint by producing food grown closer to home, not traveling from a farm in Argentina, which means there is about 100 carbon calories for every calorie consumed."

Niklas said a garden committee plans to work with campus engineers and artists to create a recycled-metal garden fence for security and to discourage wildlife. Composting facilities also will be available to produce organic fertilizer for gardeners' use. The committee also hopes to establish an arrangement with Mesa United Food Bank in order to allow gardeners to donate any unwanted or excess produce from their plots.

Niklas said the projected fee for the first year's growing season - March through May 2010 - is $70, which includes a refundable $20 deposit to cover water use and plot care as well as a $10 fee for ongoing improvements to the garden. In the future, the growing season will cover the full academic year, from September to May, and the fee will be $130. Chandler-Gilbert Community College students, whose campus is on the Polytechnic property, also are getting a plot. Biology Professor Adebiyi Banjoko was at the site with her students.

"Studying about plants and their use in the classroom is fine," she said. "But when you dig in the dirt, do a garden with your hands on it and in it, start from scratch, and then you get something fresh and delicious to eat . . . well, there is just no comparison to that experience."